Homelessness: Children

(asked on 5th May 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking, through the UN, to reinforce the need for formal registration documents for each child so that in times of crisis children with no fixed household can be identified.


Answered by
Baroness Sugg Portrait
Baroness Sugg
This question was answered on 19th May 2020

The Government is committed to supporting efforts to meet Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 which aims to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration, by 2030. The Government continues to advocate for the issuance of civil documentation in specific post-conflict countries through UN mechanisms, including the Security Council Working Group for Children and Armed Conflict.

Last year DFID approved a four-year £15 million Digital Identity as an Enabler for Development programme to support the World Bank Group’s Identification for Development initiative to implement trusted, secure, universal and inclusive digital Identification and civil registration systems from birth to death in over 40 countries.

Children on the Move is a DFID-funded 3-year programme (2017-2020) working with UNICEF to help children on the move in Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. In Somalia the work includes providing children with a legal identity, without which they are at a greater risk of family separation, trafficking and illegal adoption. In 2019, 101,300 children were provided with legal identity documents including a birth certificate.

As well as this, some of the £30 million which DFID is providing to the Global Financing Facility (GFF) supports birth registration in DRC, Kenya, Liberia, Rwanda and Uganda.

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